PARIS — France announced Friday that its forces were fighting alongside African allies in the first Western intervention to help the beleaguered government of Mali wrest control of the north section of its country from Islamist militants who captured it last spring.

In a speech, French President Francois Hollande confirmed that his forces were in Mali and pledged that they would stay “as long as necessary” to prevent the desert nation from becoming a new haven for al-Qaeda-linked extremists.

“Mali is facing an assault by terrorist elements coming from the north whose brutality and fanaticism is known across the world,” Hollande said, according to Agence France-Presse.

Britain announced support for the campaign.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news conference Friday that the United States remains deeply concerned by the events in Mali and is consulting “very closely” with France. She said the U.S. government had not been asked by Mali or France for direct U.S. military support.

“Obviously, the Malian government’s need is urgent right now, which is why France is responding,” Nuland said.

The escalation came as a surprise because analysts had expected it to take months before officials figured out how a proposed Western-backed, 3,000-person force made up of troops from West African nations would be financed, led, trained and equipped.

Nuland said the future of the previously planned multinational force was uncertain, with no clarity yet on training, the funding mechanism or rules of engagement. She said the U.S. would still work with the Economic Community of West African States to prepare the force for deployment but that it wasn’t yet battle-ready.

France’s decision to deploy in its former west African colony appears to have been prompted by attempts from the al-Qaeda-linked militants in the north to expand their reach. Insurgents this week seized control of Konna, a strategically located central town, and appeared poised to move on the country’s capital, Bamako. That led a concerned U.N. Security Council to ask member states to help Mali “reduce the threat posed by terrorist organizations and associated groups.”

The Malian government also said in its emergecy decree that Senegalese and Nigerian forces were taking part in the “offensive against armed Islamist groups.”

Spain came under repeated attack starting Thursday in what authorities called linked terrorist incidents, when a driver swerved a van into crowds in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district, killing more than a dozen people and injuring scores of others. Early Friday, an attempted attack unfolded in a town down the coast

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A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”